President Donald Trump’s administration is trying to squash acts of resistance to its authoritarian policies—including its extrajudicial immigration crackdown—by tying all opposition to the supposedly nefarious work of antifa, a group that doesn’t actually exist.
Trump signed an executive order Monday illegally designating antifa, short for anti-fascist, a domestic terror organization. “Antifa is a militarist, anarchist enterprise that explicitly calls for the overthrow of the United States Government, law enforcement authorities, and our system of law,” the order states.
But antifa is a movement, not a so-called organization. It lacks a central structure, and is instead a loose network of individuals and groups who act separately under the banner of opposing facism.
The order also lists activities the Trump administration claims are the work of the shadowy group, including “armed standoffs with law enforcement, organized riots, violent assaults on Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other law enforcement officers, and routine doxing of and other threats against political figures and activists.”
Some critics have argued that this language opens the door toward a law enforcement crackdown on protesters and activists who have nothing to do with actual political extremism or violence.
“Trump’s Executive Order on Antifa is written such that someone recording masked agents snatching people off the streets, or asking these agents what they’re doing, can be deemed a ‘terrorist,’” wrote Zeteo’s Prem Thakker on X.
Across the country, Trump’s Department of Justice has repeatedly struggled to secure indictments against protesters accused of assaulting immigration officials. The Department of Homeland Security has vastly overstated claims of widespread violence against ICE officers, claims that crumble under the slightest scrutiny.
Using Trump’s executive order, law enforcement officers and prosecutors could potentially tie protesters they wish to punish to antifa. Proving affiliation to a group with no actual members is impossible, so assigning membership to antifa becomes arbitrary and easily weaponized. It’s not surprising that Trump’s efforts to punish the anti-fascists green-lights a furtherance of, well … do I even need to say it?
Trump’s targeting of antifa is a grave misdirect committed in the backlash of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk’s death. The actual rate of political violence motivated by left-wing ideologies is dwarfed by the rate of right-wing violence, but the Trump administration has made fast work removing any evidence that doesn’t support its narrative.
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